It never seemed him and rookie head coach Dallas Eakins were on the same page, either. Eakins tried to put to rest any notion that the relationship between him and Yakupov had been strained this past season.

“My relationship with Nail is a great one,” Eakins told The Fan 590’s Greg Brady and Andrew Walker, as per Sportsnet.ca.

“That’s why I kind of chuckle with the way it gets drawn out in the media. You take a kid out of the lineup and suddenly there’s a big fight going on. Well, there’s no fight. Nail understood what was going on.”

So, there’s that. But it will still be interesting to see what happens this off-season with the 20-year-old Yakupov, who has one more year remaining on his entry-level contract with the Oilers.

In the middle of March, with the end of the regular season in sight and toward the end of a difficult season overall for the Oilers, TSN’s Darren Dreger reported that it appeared unlikely Yakupov would be back in Edmonton for next season.

Minnesota Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk has been the most difficult goalies to score against this season. Leave it to a high-level player like Leon Draisaitl to make it look this, well, “easy.”

Draisaitl scored his 13th goal of 2016-17 by capping this pretty give-and-go play with Benoit Pouliot. You can see the frustration from Dubnyk at the end of the tally, as if he was saying “How was I supposed to stop that?” (though probably with more colorful language).

Draisaitl came into Friday with five goals and three assists in his last five games, so he’s been almost unstoppable lately.